Strange Connections
by Arcadya
Summary: TV Prompt Challenge. Rossi is the only awake member on a long flight back to Quantico. What will he do? Can he overcome boredom by himself? Or will he require some help from another well-traveled member of the team?


**This is my one-shot for Kavi and Sienna's TV Episode Prompt Challenge.**

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**ENTOURAGE**: Blue Balls Lagoon

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It was late, or early.

It was an unknown time and team were currently enduring a Jet flight across the country. They had finished up a case and were becoming increasingly tired of being out in the field. They were finally on their way home.

The majority of the team were asleep. Reid's spindly legs were taking up half the aisle, Derek's headphones were still shouting out about some 'shorties and pumping up club noize', Hotch had been engrossed in a case file, but that had fallen off his lap about fifteen minutes ago. Dave Rossi was still waiting for the man's subconscious to realize that the important notations and Federal printed text had unceremoniously fallen to the floor. He'd been surprised when Hotch didn't immediately wake up.

JJ and Emily were dozing on each other. JJ's head resting on Emily's shoulder, their breathing had become synchronized almost an hour ago. It was only he who couldn't sleep. He'd read through the case file five times, and couldn't bear to look at the victims anymore. They had rushed out of Gordon quickly, trying to escape the news hounds. He didn't know how JJ dealt with them on a daily basis. He definitely had a love/hate relationship with them. They were good for his business of selling his life work, and they were good for getting the right information out to the public during a crisis, but half the time they were responsible for the misdirection, misinformation and mishandling of the situations in the first place.

Rossi sighed in the dimly light cabin. Rubbing a hand over his brow, he tried to think of options to keep himself occupied. He had finally decided on going to converse with the pilot when he heard Emily make a sound.

"Emily?" He asked, keeping his voice low.

"Dave. Little help?" She was trying to remove herself from JJ's grip. She wanted to lay the new mother down on the seat without waking her up. "She's going to have a killer neck ache if we don't move her." They whispered directions and advice; the whole operation took about five minutes.

"What are you still doing up?" Emily inquired.

Rossi didn't really know why he was up. He only knew that he hadn't fallen asleep. "I was about to go talk to the pilot."

"Oh Tim? Yeah, he's sweet."

"You know the pilot?"

"Don't you?" She replied with a grin. Rossi had come to realize that Emily was going to be a constant surprise.

"I hadn't gotten around to it yet."

"You've been here for over a year Dave, you should probably start learning the names of the 'help'." He stared at her. Was she teasing him or being serious? This late/early and his sarcasm radar was malfunctioning.

"So you coming?" She was already moving toward the pilot's cabin. He huffed a bit, finally deciding she was joking and followed her.

He caught up to her as she was knocking on the wall, announcing her presence to 'Tim'.

"Yep?" Came the husky reply.

"Tim? I've brought a guest."

"Huckleberry Finn?"

"Tom Sawyer."

"Nice to finally meet you Agent Rossi." The pilot said, finally tearing his eyes away from Emily.

"Nice to meet you too?" That definitely came out as a question Dave belatedly realized.

Tim laughed, and checked some of the dials and buttons, and flashing lights on the numerous consoles. "Sit, sit." He waved a hand at the sole empty seat. Emily immediately sat down, shrugging an apology toward Rossi.

Dave leaned against the wall, making sure there weren't any random buttons to be buttoned that could cause the Jet to go down over the cattle fields, or corn fields, or wheat fields…the countryside.

"You getting tired yet Tim?" Emily asked after a few moments of silence.

"Not yet, you have to win a few rounds before I relinquish control." Tim answered. They apparently chatted often. Rossi settled back to watch them interact.

"Where exactly are we?" Emily inquired peering out through one of the forward facing windows.

"Eh, landmarks are important, names not so much."

"You'd make a great topographical engineering company."

"All the women would be buying my maps!" Tim answered quickly; clearly, this was a conversation they'd had many times before.

"So…Wallace?"

"William?"

"Nope."

"Gromit?"

"Correct."

"Cleopatra?"

"Easy…Marc Anthony."

"Okay, okay, another one. Harder this time." Tim amended, pushing another button and checking the altimeter. "Ah…Porgy?"

"Oh, oh wait I know this one, I do…" Emily's eyes searched the ceiling. This was obviously a game they'd played before.

"Bess." Rossi interjected.

"Oh thank you Dave! Porgy & Bess! I've seen it too. College."

"Hey, that's not fair, two against one."

"I brought him, I get him. You can have him next time."

Dave chuckled as Tim's face settled into acceptance, he's obviously had some run-in's with Emily's dedication to winning before.

"Okay so, that means it's your turn Rossi." Tim said.

"Ah, The Lone Ranger?"

After a few moments of contemplative silence, Tim answered with, "Tonto."

Rossi nodded even though neither of the pair were looking at him.

Tim started the next round of the game, "Spock?"

"Kirk." Emily immediately answered, "I could have answered that in my sleep, Tim."

"Rosencrantz?"

"Guildenstern." Rossi answered quickly, "Sherlock Holmes?"

"Easy," Tim replied, "Dr. Watson."

"No." Rossi grinned; he was definitely getting a handle on this game. There was silence in the pilot's cabin again. Emily's forehead scrunched a little as she thought through the stories she had read of Holmes.

"Oh." She stated, resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Dave could practically see the minute eye movement. "Professor Moriarty."

"Correct."

"My turn!" She gleefully cried, "Bill?"

"And Ted!" Tim answered happily.

"Nope." She smirked at the two men.

Silence reigned for a while, finally Tim broke and begged for help, "Clues?".

"Flora and pans." Emily replied.

"Flora and pans?" Tim repeated.

Rossi zeroed in on Emily. He started off by thinking about what she would be thinking. Her brain worked differently to most people, she was kind of like Reid that way. She's giving two clues, which means that she's not directly referring to the other name. But whatever the answer is to that clue must be a clue to the real answer. So 'flora and pans'…well, flora is plants. Plants and pans doesn't make sense and knowing Emily, her clues wouldn't be too obvious, just obvious enough. She likes to win, and she wouldn't make the clues too easy. So not plants or pans…plants are flowers…and some pans are pots. Suddenly, Rossi remembered a television show his nephew had been obsessed with 'Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men'. It was an odd show, but it definitely sounded like it could be along the lines of what Emily would think.

"Ben?" He asked.

"Yes!" Emily shouted happily. She liked to win, but knowing people understood the way her mind worked far outweighed any winning points she might accumulate.

"Shhh!" Tim hissed at her, "You'll wake the masses and then you'll never get to take over when I'm tired."

_Take over?_ Rossi repeated, _that didn't sound good._

"It's your turn Rossi, and then I'll be _tired_." Tim said, glancing significantly at Emily.

"Okay?" _Why did this suddenly feel like something incredibly bad was about to happen?_ "Ernie?"

Emily cracked up. Her laughs reverberating in the tiny cabin, through her giggles she finally managed to say, "Bert!"

"No, no!" Tim exclaimed, "no offense Rossi, but we need a better ending than that."

Rossi shrugged, "I froze. Said the first thing that popped into my head."

"The first thing that popped into your head was Sesame Street? The quasi-gay couple, whose orientation has tactfully been ignored?" Emily was still laughing; Rossi truly didn't believe it was _that _funny.

"Baldrick?" Tim supplied, deciding that Rossi should be ignored in favor of keeping the peace aboard the Jet.

"Blackadder, too easy Tim. Come on; give me something to stretch my brain. And didn't you use Blackadder a couple of weeks ago?"

"Damn, I did too; we were flying right over Georgia at the time too."

"What does Georgia have to do with Blackadder?" Emily's voice still carried the laughter she had been expressing previously.

"I don't know. Let me try again."

"Hurry up Tim. We don't have much time before we get back to the airport. I want to get some time in."

"Autobot."

"Of course you would go The Transformers route."

Tim smirked. There was no way Emily would ever get this one.

"Tim that's cruel. You know I don't know anything about Transformers. Even after the last time when you tried, for _three_ hours to explain it to me."

The pilot grinned, evilly.

Rossi was surprised to realize that he actually knew the answer to this one. He'd overheard Garcia and that Lunch guy talking about Bumblebees and other weird names two days ago. "Decepticon."

Emily turned to look at him; he was pleased when her 'ecstatic' smile broke out. "Hand over the reign's mister." She said, still facing Rossi. For a moment, he thought she was talking to him, until he saw Tim take his hands off the controls, and make a flurry of movements.

Emily turned back to the controls and started to fly the plane.

"I didn't know you knew how to fly an airplane."

"It's been a while, and I learned in Prague, or Germany, was it Italy? I don't remember. Somewhere."

"But those credentials don't fly in the States." Tim answered Rossi's unspoken question.

"Tim's helping me log my hours." Emily was focused on the controls, and was carefully manoeuvring the plane into descent mode.

"Are you going to land the plane?" Rossi asked, slightly scared at the prospect.

"Not today. I'm just getting us into a better position for the landing…Tim will do the all the hard parts."

"Yeah, you should actually go back to the others Agent Rossi, wake them up. We'll be landing soon. I don't want any of them sideways for that."

Rossi hesitated, _shouldn't Emily come back too?_

"I'll be there in a minute Dave, just have to reschedule our next training session. This last case threw out my plans."

Rossi nodded and left the cabin, he could hear Tim's low voice talking in aeronautic terms and other such language unknown to him. He hadn't known Emily was learning to fly. He didn't even know anyone on the plane knew the pilot's except for JJ and Hotch. He wondered how often Emily 'flew' the plane when they were asleep.

Rossi soon got everyone awake, and by they time they had buckled themselves in preparation for landing, Emily had returned. "Harlequin?" He asked, when Emily sat beside him.

As the plane made a slight bump onto the tarmac, Emily answered, "Pierrot or Columbine."

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**Okay so, this is completely NOT what I had planned for the prompt...it was still going to be a discussion between Emily, Rossi and the pilot, but not about this, and it was going to be about something related to blue balls (although not in it's current colloquial context) ;) and lagoons, but this came out instead! **

**But still, I did the challenge...with the prompt, and the prompt _prompted_ me to write this - so there you go!**

**Arc...**

**Sadly, I do realize this has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but hopefully some of you enjoyed it!  
**


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